Loading summary
Transcript54 lines
- [00:01]
A
Hi everyone. Welcome to another episode of Bits and the Interview. I'm your host, Steve Ehrlich and I am here today with Andy Baer. He is the Managing Director of Asset Management at gsr and many of you will probably know him as the former head of CoinDesk Indices. So welcome.
- [00:20]
B
Andy, good to see you. Thanks for having me on.
- [00:23]
A
Yeah, absolutely. And I know you've been a GSR for a couple weeks now, but, but welcome and congratulations on, on the new role. Excited to see.
- [00:33]
B
I, I've. GSR is one of the firms that got me into crypto in the first place. John Laughlin, who's the Chief Investment Officer here. We've known each other more than 20 years and I, I remember seeing on LinkedIn when he joined GSR and thinking like, John Laughlin's at a crypto firm, like, okay, so we have to look into this a little bit more. And so we kept in pretty close touch. GSR was a great client of ours when I was at CoinDesk and now we have this great new venture to embark upon. So it's really exciting and I think it's at a good time for the industry and a good time for gsr, a good time for the markets.
- [01:16]
A
Yeah, and it's fun too. I mean, you and I, we used to appear on panels together, both as members of, I guess full time members of the media. You at CoinDesk, me at Forbes and Unchained, and now I'm at Sharplink and you're at GSR and. But we still get to have the same conversations, so I love it.
- [01:32]
B
Yeah, yeah, that's right. No, that's so true. And that's, that's kind of what's great about this industry, that people who can get around and know folks and are well networked, but also just have a good technical sense of how the markets work, can really do a lot of interesting things, you know, on the practice side, but also on the, on the content and media side.
- [01:57]
A
Yeah, absolutely. So we have a ton to talk about today. I mean, all of it's going to be sort of being driven by what's happening in, in the Persian Gulf, so on and so forth. But before we get to that, just a little bit of housekeeping. Number one, as always, nothing that anyone says on the show should be construed as investment or financial advice. For full disclosures, please see unchained.com bitsandbips and second, before we really kick things off, let's just take a brief pause so we can hear from one of the sponsors who makes this show possible.
- [02:34]
C
This episode is brought to you by adaptive security, the first cybersecurity company backed by OpenAI. As AI makes deep fakes and synthetic identities easier than ever, Adaptive helps companies test and strengthen their defenses. Learn more@adaptivesecurity.com Quick note before we get into today's episode, Bits and Bits now has its dedicated feed. We're spinning off from the Unchained feed and moving to a new podcast and YouTube channel. So if you want to keep up with our weekly livestreams and macro meets crypto breakdowns, make sure to subscribe to Bits and Bits directly. We won't publish there until March, but subscribe today so you can be ready for launch. Be sure to subscribe to the new feeds@unchained crypto.com bitsandbps
- [03:18]
A
okay, all right, so let's kind of dive in here. Probably makes sense to just set the stage for, for where we're at right now. We are talking on Thursday afternoon Eastern time, and obviously the world is on, on a knife's edge. Oil keeps going up. I believe it's over $100 a barrel yet again, despite an unprecedented, I guess, release or scheduled release of I think 400 million barrels from the, I think it's the EIA or the IEA. I forget, I forget exactly what the acronym is. The largest in history because the Strait of Hormuz is more or less closed. And despite what was supposed to have, I guess, a bit of a palliative attack effect on oil prices, they're still going up major. Some of the traditional safe havens are struggling industrials, certain cyclicals. But I guess if there is a silver lining, and I don't know if that's quite the right terminology to use in a situation like this, Bitcoin is actually acting like a safe haven. It's up about 4% since the conflict started on, on February 28th and over the last few days or so. Yeah, I mean, it's, it's performing the way I think many people hoped that it would. And I think, Andy, a really good place is just to kind of start there. I'd love to kind of get your sense of what you're seeing. What do you think is behind bitcoin and then the rest of crypto, which sort of follows bitcoin's lead, performing well. And do you think that this sort of quote unquote rally is sustainable?
- [04:55]
B
Yeah, thanks. And I'll just, I'll, I'll add on to your disclaimer language by saying, you know, we'll talk some views here. These are personal views. These may or may not be the views of, of gsr, but I, you know, I always look at the VIX first. That's just the world I grew up in in equity. Volatility is a sense of big portfolios and banks and insurance companies needing to hedge. And I just checked right now, Vix is around 26 on it on a day when, you know, equities are down one and a half percent. So some of that is just, you know, riding up the skew. And it's, it's not a, it's not a 32 Vix, which of course implies like a 2% move daily move in equities. It's not a 40 Vix, it's not a 50 Vix, so, so it's kind of easy, at least in my mind, to measure the scope of crisis or the scope of contagion of an oil situation into markets. Looking at things that way. And to me, you know, these days, 26 fixes, we're sort of on yellow, but we're not, you know, we're not on red. With respect to crypto, it's been at the same time a really frustrating kind of five weeks and a really reassuring kind of five weeks ever since the, the sort of deleveraging event on February 5, which was really, I think most people feel that that was really centered in IBIT and IBIT options, not in crypto native exchanges or crypto native trading. That was sort of the, you know, the second shoe dropping after the October 10th deleveraging event, which some people feel is still kind of making its way through the elementary canal of the markets.
- [06:45]
A
I think a lot of people are still waiting to hear who really got cleaned out there or, or who may not survive. And perhaps they got a bit of a reprieve with.
- [06:55]
B
Yeah, that's right.
- [06:56]
A
Solidifying in the 60 to 70,000 range.
- [06:59]
B
Correct. And you know, even more recently, you're hearing about, you know, some, some firms having, having trouble related to lending and things like that. So it's clear that by early Feb, the market, the crypto market had taken, had the wind taken out of it, was deleveraged and was being, acting very cautious. And we kind of found a bitcoin level that was pretty much exactly where it was before the US election in 2024. But since then, we've traded this very, very tight range. Bitcoin, Ether, Solana have all 65 to 71 on Bitcoin, around 2,000 on Ether and around whatever, $85 once Solana had gotten its legs under it and we've kind of sat there trading in a range sometimes absorbing weekend shocks, but not really right, not kind of exiting that range. So I guess it kind of feels low energy, it feels low conviction, it feels catalyst free. But it also feels a little bit like a base camp that if we have positive catalysts coming out of this that we could develop some positive momentum. So I guess I'm, I'm less impressed by the 4% move since, since the military activity started. I'm more sort of impressed with the level of stability of the base camp. Although we're all kind of, I think frustrated by the low energy.
- [08:31]
A
Yeah, we're going to get into all that. But actually first when I just talk about the VIX a little bit more. Yeah, lots of people know what the VIX is. They've heard of it. They, they, they, they know the motto short the vix etc. I mean it's really just a, it's sort of an index that's based on options pricing for related to the S P500 and you kind of put that at yellow. It's not like flashing red like it was during the unwind of the, the Japanese yen carry trade briefly. I guess it was what last, last August, was it? August, August of last year. And I'd love to maybe get your sense of the psychology behind that. Everyone is wondering when Trump is going to taco, but this may be a slightly different, I mean drawing parallels between what happened, what's happening now and what happened in June last year in Israel, but these are different scenarios. And Iran, it's already much more. I think it was a 12 day war, 12 day war last year. I think today actually might be the 12th day of this war or we're around that but this doesn't seem to be any close to ending. So he may not be able to decide when, when the war is over. But equity traders don't seem to again be flashing red. I mean is it just recent history of, of these harsh, harsh rapid rebounds from like Liberation Day and, and then what happened in, in Israel or like I guess my question is like do you think that the VIX is right now is appropriate or are we looking at this through rose colored glasses?
- [10:03]
B
Yeah, I've stopped telling the VIX where I think it should be a long time ago.
- [10:08]
A
Just tell all of us.
- [10:09]
B
That's right. I will say that there was definitely more surprise if we look back a year from now. Completely different set of circumstances. Right. We had a, a very, I mean I Guess they, they both were precipitated by the President. But you had the liberation day kind of tariff tantrum as I had been calling it was pretty severe. Bitcoin really took it on the chin there which made you think that it was really leverage and liquidity oriented. Right. Bitcoin came, came off as a hundred thousand to, to the I think low 80s and maybe even on a per liquidation I think low 80s is. Yeah might have even touched 78 or 70 and that was a pretty sharp V recovery back out of that when, when the news flow changed. And I think the surprise element really is what would have driven a higher VIX at this point. There is something about what's going on now which does not seem to include enough surprise for the VIX to really want to be into that more orange towards red mode. I mean let's remember, right, the VIX is, is heavily pricing in how in Demand downside s P500 put options are costing. Right. And who is buying those? Banks and insurance companies are buying them every day which keeps the volatility market, you know, shapes the way it is. But is it, you know, is it people who are buying equity protection more tactically that's driving up the VIX higher? Yeah, it would be. Right now it doesn't feel like there's a lot of contagion from what's going on in oil into equities. Equities seem pretty, pretty sanguine and laid back from my point of view. Maybe that's a reason that crypto hasn't legged lower here. But you know, at what, 6600, 6700 on the S and P like we're not, it's nowhere near the kind of surprise based drawdown that we saw last year. And of course I'm not an equity expert a lot these days but, but looking at that VIX number. Yeah. You know, one way for people who aren't very familiar with the VIX to think about it is what it implies. The Vix isn't that 26 because of this, but think, you know, a 16 Vix implies a 1% move in equities every day and a 32 Vix implies 2%. So think about what that means. That's you know, 2% moves on what, 130s P points in a day that that would feel. You would feel that. Right? So I guess we're about 80 handles down today on futures. So the VIX is kind of. And the movement in equity prices is kind of the same. So we'll see. I Guess the other thing I, I like your point though. This could reverse on a dime with news flow or with a positive announcement, in which case you'd be sad that you bought all those expensive equity puts because you know, you'd be back, you know, back, back, game on.
- [13:31]
A
Yeah, I mean we just have to look at who was it that the energy secretary with that tweet from yesterday claiming that the US Navy escorted a tanker through the straight and then had to pull it back. And just seeing the, the whipsaw in oil prices, I mean it gives you a sense of how people are looking for some sort of North Star to kind of like anchor their, their strategies. I do want to focus a little more on, on equities, especially like tech equities right now because it like there's been some coverage in the ft, the Wall Street Journal, but I mean people like you and me that just look at charts on a daily basis, it's easy to see that they're doing well right now. And typically these are some of the more risky assets that you would expect to suffer during periods of, I guess, economic worry. But they are the safe havens right now. I'd love your thoughts as to why. Some of the people I speak with say, well they were punished in the last few weeks because of fears about AI and there was that big drawdown there, not just cannibalizing revenues from some of the software companies, but also just the amount of debt that was being sold to sort of finance all these build outs that, that maybe they hit a bit of a soft landing and now they have room to grow as opposed to being, as opposed to this hitting when those stocks are at already frothy levels. And maybe the same narrative applies to crypto that it's been punished for a while now and gold has been on its hair. Maybe there's a bit of a rotation there, but I'd love your thoughts on what's happening right now and like if we really need to kind of re evaluate what qualifies as a safe haven in this particular economy.
- [15:12]
B
Yeah, it's, I'm going to bring feelings to a facts fight here. You know a lot of what we saw happen last year, all through last year, and crypto is a great standard bearer for this. We saw a lot of fast money that helped propel the crypto rally in the second and third quarter. Really broad rally. Everything you know my old, the indices that we were building at Coindesk were, were, were going up supported by alts. Right. Ethereum had a massive rally and Then, you know, and there was of course, great news flow to support that circle went public. My, you know, former parent company Bullish went, went public. The genius act was passed. You had the SEC and CFTC holding hands in Washington. It was a beautiful thing to see. And then all of a sudden, October happened. The fast money moved elsewhere into gold temporarily. You had the deleveraging effect in crypto. So nothing really changed. In fact, the progress of integration of digital assets and blockchain continued almost at an accelerating pace. The news flow, even in the last couple of weeks, it's almost been like Krakens in two or three different crazy press releases about exciting things. New York Stock Exchange, NASDAQ, ICE, CME, they're all doing super cool things FIA BOCAs this week. I mean, I can't even imagine all the cool things that are being talked about in those hotel suites down at the Boca Raton. And I think it's the same for tech and AI where the work is continuing. Right. The building is continuing, the integrations, the applications, the adoption of blockchain and of AI are continuing pretty much on a straight line. But at some point the money, the fast money decides it doesn't want to play there and it goes elsewhere. It did go to silver and gold in the fourth quarter and now both of those metals are priced to perfection to the extent that you really can't go into them and think of them as, as you would have thought of them a year ago just because they've had this kind of massive rally. So it really depends, I guess, on what your horizon is. Again, personal view, not GSR view and certainly not investment advice, but these giant companies that are going to have the power to create, support, store and energize artificial intelligence, they're continuing to build and over time that those benefits will start to realize themselves. We're at a record high on the crypto side for stablecoins. 317 billion, I think we hit or close to 320 billion. Half of that is Ethereum. Right. And Solana is making some strides there in improving itself market share. So how can you ignore those things? Bitcoin just minted its 20th 20 millionth Bitcoin. The network is as solid as ever. And quantum fears aside, the ecosystem just continues to develop every single day. So I don't know from a, from a safe haven point of view that's very, it's a very tactical sort of mindset. Clearly us Treasuries haven't necessarily been a great safe haven.
- [18:47]
A
Yeah, and that was actually going to Be my, my next question for you before we kind of move into crypto market structure.
- [18:53]
B
So no, where can you go? Right. You can go into dollar cash. You can't go into gold necessarily. As a. I hope it stays up here at 5100. Oil is extremely volatile and probably too much in the picture. And crypto is kind of just been steady. So I don't know. Good safe haven feels like cash monitor and don't trade this market.
- [19:20]
A
Yeah, it's, it's really.
- [19:22]
B
Sorry.
- [19:25]
A
I mean, it's like up is down, black is white. I, I, I, I, I totally get it. I mean, during other periods of strife, like, you would expect yields to drop like people to, to rush into things like Treasuries. But again, that's not what's happening here. It keeps ticking up and it really, in a way, the dollar, I guess, still have, still having its safe haven status. The DXY is going up, but you would expect yields to go down as people rush into bonds.
- [19:55]
B
And that wasn't the case last year. So at least maybe the dollars found its base camp as well as Bitcoin and ether. Right?
- [20:03]
A
Yeah, the dollar just still has that Teflon quality. Um, so, yeah, I guess. My, my. I just want to give you a chance to, if there's anything else you want to comment on Treasuries before we take a break and move a little more directly into crypto markets.
- [20:17]
B
No, no, no. Traditional markets. I think I've already said 105% of what I feel confident about, so, so all good there. But I, I do think in markets like this, and this just comes from being, you know, in, in, in finance for a couple of decades, if people feel like this is a very tough market to navigate and nothing is where it should be, that happens sometimes. And it's, it's, it's a good time to observe with dry powder.
- [20:46]
A
Yeah, I think so. Or it reminds me, I don't know if you ever watched the show Parks and Recreation, if that was Tom Haverford, he had this, he had this one. He had a lot of famous lines. But when I liked, he's like, when I go bet on the horses, I never lose. And he's like. And he's like, do you know why I bet on all the horses? Maybe not the worst advice in this market. Anyway, let's take a very quick break so we can hear from another one of our sponsors, and then we're going to talk about what's specifically happening in crypto during this tumultuous time.
- [21:19]
C
This episode is brought to you by Adaptive Security, the first cybersecurity company backed by OpenAI. As AI becomes more capable, attackers no longer need to break into your systems. They just need a convincing imitation of someone you trust. That could mean a deep faked voice on a call, a synthetic coworker on Zoom, or phishing emails written by AI that are nearly impossible to distinguish from the real thing. Adaptive's platform is designed for this new reality. It runs deepfake vishing and AI generated phishing simulations so your team can see exactly how these attacks work and practice responding before it happens for real. Their AI content creator also turns new threats or compliance updates into interactive multilingual training within minutes. You can learn more@adaptivesecurity.com Quick note before we continue with today's episode, Bits and Bips now has its own dedicated home. We're spinning off from Unchained and launching a standalone podcast and YouTube channel focused on the Fed macro, AI and how it all collides with crypto. If you want to keep up with our weekly live streams and Macro meets Crypto breakdowns, make sure you're following Bits and bips directly. We won't start publishing until March, but getting set up now means you'll be ready on day one. You can find the new Bits and Bips channels at unchained crypto.com Bits and Bits. You can also find us by searching Bits and Bips on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen.
- [22:49]
A
So one of the we're back. So one of the really interesting things about crypto, although TRI is finally catching up, is that it trades 24 7, 365. It doesn't no holidays, it doesn't take vacation. And for a while, I mean going back in years we would going back years we would see Bitcoin and other cryptos being punished sometimes because of the fact that bad news seems to happen over the weekend and there's nowhere else to put on a view that is changing a little bit. And there's even in the world of crypto, there's a lot of different ways that that fast money you were referencing can now be used to to express vantage points on the markets. I think we have to start with with hyper hyper liquid and what's happening there, especially with some of their oil purpose contracts which are I think they did like $1.2 billion of of notional value in a day which for them is is massive. I mean the hype token is is surging Kalshi and Polymarket I know Kalshi is Not quote unquote, a crypto company. Polymarket is, I mean we're seeing tons of activity happening there. Some of it, I guess morally ambiguous, related to like the Ayatollah and his fate. But, but nonetheless it just shows the demand for people being able to trade on, on these events and, and what's happening. And like this is the quintessential product market fit. So I love like your thoughts on just kind of what's happening. What, what are you seeing and like what is the associated impact on, of all this activity on, on traditional markets? Is this a case of like the tail wagging the dog to a certain degree?
- [24:29]
B
That's a big question and I, I would be, I don't think the answer is knowable right now. The, the, the most confident. The thing I, I guess I could think about with most confidence is that Bitcoin in particular is the most, I guess the, is the asset with easily the most regulatory clarity and, and, and methods of access. Right. Of all digital assets, it's the asset which makes the most sense to me as a risk absorber over weekends, right? There's, there's not only, you know, there's, there's a very, very deep Options Market that's 24, 7, right. Very good perps markets. And, and you could actually get more people who are not in crypto a lot thinking about using Bitcoin as the thing that they would reach to on a weekend. Does that extend down all the way to the top 20 or top 30 names? Probably not just out of familiarity then you just have crypto people trading with other crypto people. To me that's less of a shock risk absorber function and more of just people liking to trade and being able to trade on those markets. As for traditional assets either being represented in derivatives or tokenized over the weekend, I guess the first question one has to ask oneself is like, well, who is able to access these things? Right. Sometimes in our industry we still tend to overestimate the degree to which the market can be on hyper liquid or the market can think about using tokenized equities. It's a pretty small subset. It doesn't mean the people aren't smart or that they haven't written smart algorithms, but that kind of macro shock absorber effect for the weekend, suggesting that SIFIs that big banks and insurance companies or giant pension funds or sovereign wealth funds or giant macro hedge funds can now reach into these other blockchain venues and continue to hedge their books over the weekend or take shots. I don't know if we're quite there yet. So I, I, you know, I, I see that there is room for more volatility over the weekend in the absence of other markets being open. I'm just not sure it's all the players and I'm not and therefore I'm not sure it represents the market view so much. It just represents the view of the people who can trade there. Bitcoin might be the exception to that and my view may be outdated, but that's my sense. It can only be the market's view when the entire market can participate.
- [27:27]
A
Okay, so maybe we can just expand a little bit further then. I mean, I think we're getting close to a point in time when the entire market can participate. I mean tokenized stocks are a thing we were discussing before you mentioned Kraken partnering with, with NASDAQ and was it OKX partnering with ice?
- [27:48]
B
Yeah, with ice's money anyway.
- [27:52]
A
Yeah, yeah. And I think the CFTC mean what they're either setting up rules or they're laying the groundwork to allow for 24,7 trading of, of derivatives contracts on, on the platform. So we are getting to that world. I'd love you to sort of talk about like, or sort of, I guess explore like when you think we might get to the point where like these are basically what's, what I'm looking for. Where these are like mature liquid perpetual markets. No. No pun intended.
- [28:25]
B
Yeah.
- [28:26]
A
Where sort of information can get disseminated across financial infrastructure right away and it doesn't have to just be crypto.
- [28:35]
B
Right. No, I, it's a good point because, because I, I do, I do think that Bitcoin has a, has a unique place and role there right now because it's the most familiar. It's probably the thing that you can imagine a non crypto native market participant reaching for in one form or another. And look, CME announced that they're aiming towards futures exchanges, will aim towards 247 trading regulated futures exchanges. I think that's just a matter of time and that may just be, you know, how this conversation ends early. Right. That you end up with the regulated venue. So there I, let's break it into two parts, right? There's, there's perps and then there's, let's say, you know, tokenized equities or tokenized securities. Perps are amazing. They're a brilliant innovation. They've proven themselves successful. I think that the, as, as another, you know, as my, my friend and, and you know, Bits and BIPS host Chris Perkins points out that, you know, having not having an independent member driven clearing function. Right. Having exchanges clear themselves creates some vulnerabilities in how the perp markets work. But they're a fun, fantastic innovation but not extremely compatible with the way Americans tend to trade. It's definitely compatible with the way retail can trade. But I think spend some time thinking about this. I think they're a little bit more different than dated futures contracts than people realize. It's not just you take the expiration date off and you have a funding event and you know, suddenly you have this experience of trading a perpetual. And you don't have to think about, you know, a term structure of interest rates or cash and carry costs and all that there. I think there's more to it than that. Part of the reason perps work is that, you know, if, if a retail person goes and buys a highly levered perp on Binance or Bybit or OkX or somewhere offshore, they post a little bit of collateral. They really have an experience that's more like owning an option than owning a Delta one derivative. Right. In other words, they're either going to get liquidated or they're going to have experience a big, you know, positive P L event. There's no shade thrown at them if they're liquidated. Right. If you're, if your collateral gets liquidated on a, on a perp exchange, well, you can show up the next day with, you know, without a big red mark next to your name and do it again. That's different from the way futures markets work here. And so I would like to think that perps will be this heavily adopted instrument that institutions around the world will come to use, especially on nights and weekends to try to express views. But I'm not entirely sure that it's as compatible in current form as people think it might be. It might be a longer distance away. It may be that you have traditional exchanges running 22 hours a day and just adding Saturday and Sunday and on things like maybe it'll start with bitcoin and ether and then move to oil and maybe to equity futures too at some point. That'll probably be the load, the road of less, of less resistance.
- [32:16]
A
Okay, one more question on crypto and then I want to sort of look ahead a little bit. We've spoken about bitcoin, we've discussed hyper liquid and what's happening with the hype token. Yeah, crypto markets are, are highly correlated during normal times and they are right now as well. But I am interested if there are any tokens that are either outperforming or underperforming that you've noticed that are worth mentioning or just one of the reasons, frankly I like bringing on people like you and people from firms like GSR is that you really kind of have your finger on the pulse of what the smart money is doing. Maybe not quite the fast money, but the smart money, the institutions. And I always like to sort of get some insight into what you're seeing across your platform that might help a lot of the retail investors who listen to this understand sort of the ways that professionals in a very not financial advice are thinking about periods such as this.
- [33:22]
B
Let me answer this way. First of all, GSR has a fabulous franchise. We're a 13 year old firm that, whose primary business is helping new projects get off the ground with good market making. And therefore GSR has this tremendous and almost unique experiences with newer and smaller names, many of which have grown up to be big names. And that's helped GSR grow and really maintain a business based on excellent risk management, excellent trading, but really customer franchise and being a first choice for many people who want market making services for new, for new issues, you know. Therefore the trading activity around what happens is, is very. We have a lot of restrictions about what kind of names we want to look at, what kind of names we can talk about. I think that my strongest feeling about investing and portfolio management in crypto is just to think that breadth, and I said this in my old role too, breadth is important. You kind of need more than Bitcoin and a couple of majors to go up and stay up. You need kind of a cadre of big names which, who are going to. One, they're going to demonstrate better the connection between the token price and the value of the underlying business or operation. Two, they're going to have a reduction in volatility and have some kind of, you know, increased steadiness which hopefully will increase with different access points like ETFs or derivatives or things like that. I do think, and this is definitely a carryover from my old world that you, you do need index derivatives, right? You, you absolutely need traders to have a way to risk manage bigger chunks of the market at once. I think doing things token by token is, is not going to be a good way for the market to evolve. So the indices that I used to build, I, I still have a lot of, I'm, you know, obviously keep an eye on them and hoping that they proliferate in the derivative space. Once, once that kind of group is established, whatever index, you know, triumphs and becomes the heart of risk management. Those names are going to become, they're going to take off, right, because they're going to basically represent that sort of bigger bite of crypto that becomes essential. And then it's going to just be a game of size, relevance, familiarity, access and use that's going to make those names important and familiar. So right now, most investor conversations where you really think about adoption and new money coming in and staying in for the long haul, they still are grappling with this idea. Okay, well, what about stablecoins? How do I play stable coins? How do I play tokenization? Okay, well you have big layer 1 blockchains like Ethereum and Solana, and maybe you stop there, maybe your portfolio is Bitcoin, Ether and, and Solana and you just wait to see what happens next. But you're at least following the slow news of record numbers of stable coins and record numbers of tokenization. So I still like to think about coming from the top down. On the other end of the spectrum, the growth in things like Defi vaults is, I think, reinvigorating. A new second coming, let's call it, of Defy, that has a lot broader user potential, user base and a lot more mature platforms and a lot more, you know, rings around the trees for some of these, for some of these protocols. So I do think anything involved with advancing borrowing and lending and providing yield through Defi is going to be, there are going to be some big winners there because I think the demand side of simple trustable yield is going to expand whether or not rewards are allowed on stable coins. So I think that's just a sector that I think has tremendous growth potential. But aside from that, just start from the top down and follow the adoption trail and follow the risk management trail.
- [38:08]
A
Yeah, well, when we have you back in a few months, we'll check and see if you're right and then we'll hold you to it. Okay, so let's start the wrap up here. But I, I'm not even going to ask you to prognosticate on what's going to happen with, with the war, but there are some legitimate years that inflation, I mean, could go up to like three, three and a half percent for a prolonged period of time. I mean, actually we had a report that essentially was obsolete the second it came out. I think inflation was, was flat month to month and was up, I think, what, 2.4% year over year, which was actually somewhat encouraging. Again, irrelevant now because it, it's a snapshot of a world that doesn't exist anymore. But, but there was hope I guess that like if it was going to flat, maybe we'd get a few more rate cuts this year, especially once. Kevin Warsh, if and when it be comes Jerome Powell's successor as Fed Chair. I know that the employment numbers for February were abysmal. So that also would kind of like lend some credence to the idea of perhaps stimulating the economy. But now we're in a world where if the oil is going to stay above a hundred dollars a barrel, we're looking at inflation like 3, 3 and a half percent Etc. Central banks in Europe are talking about rate hikes, not, not cut in the U.S. i, I think talking about a hike would almost be like anathema given the current political climate. But I know betters are, are now paring back their expectations of successive cuts this year. So what do you see and how, like, I guess like how again, like should investors in a not financial advice point of view, like how should they think about allocating, especially as like this conflict. The longer it goes on, I think it's fair to say the longer it's going to continue to go on because it just becomes more complex, more actors enter the fray, positions become hardened and then we're going to run up against the midterm elections in, in not a very long period of time. So I know it's kind of a complex question, but no, it's going around in my head and I'm sure in our, in our listeners and viewers and they're trying to make sense of all of it and perhaps harden their portfolios for multiple different worlds, like, like a multiverse of different scenarios.
- [40:35]
B
It's the essential question, right? And it's, people kind of want to know what to do and how to feel. They also want to know are they in this alone or are they in this together? Right. Are they weathering a storm, you know, after having whatever between a 30 and depending on what token you're looking at 30 or 60 or 70% drawdown since October and then basically a flat sort of energyless market, you know, people have the right to be frustrated. I guess my observations are that the attention span of the market feels like it moves in quarters. So even if you had, I guess a pretty firm sense about Fed policy or you know, the midterms are going to be three quarters from now or two and a half quarters from now, or you have some event that's deep in the future, the market's going to behave, it's going to develop its Trends, its supply demand, its appetite for leverage, its availability of leverage. It's kind of, kind of moved quarter to quarter. Last year was a great example where you had a horrendous first quarter, amazing second and third quarters and a terrible fourth quarter. Right. We're starting out the year with a quarter that got pretty sour pretty quickly. And we're coming to the end of that quarter. At the end of this month, at the end of this month, we may have a resolution to the geopolitical situation. We, we may have a completely digested, you know, October 10th and February 5th, you know, resolution that allows some liquidity back into the market. Well, we're closer to him or, or we'll have a new Fed chair and we'll probably begin in that season of making things look good for the midterms. Right. I don't want to call it window dressing, but there's, you know, there's.
- [42:32]
A
We'll call it staging the house.
- [42:33]
B
Yeah, yeah. Good, good.
- [42:36]
A
Perhaps pun intended this time.
- [42:37]
B
Good news. That's right. Good news won't, good news won't be a surprise. So, and then we've had this base camp of very low volatility, very steady crypto in an otherwise kind of, you know, not so unturbulent market. So I think Q2 is going to be a really interesting time to watch. And if trends, if we really can develop good uptrends, I think that's what people should, you know, keep an eye on whether they're already allocated into crypto and want to just sort of feel some relief or whether they're looking for entry points. It's frustrating to enter in a flat energy list market because nothing happens and you're just kind of frustrated and, and uncomfortable. So look for the quarter to turn, look for signs of transforming, maybe look even for a little bit more volatility in crypto. Keep an eye on things like per funding rates to see if people are reaching. You know, another thing I like to look at, and this goes back to my work at Coindesk, is I, I like looking at AAVE rates. You know, Coindesk put this ave staking rate product together and you can sort of look at the daily not staking rate, sorry, borrowing rate for abe, for usdc. And you note that when the, the markets are really kind of low energy, those rates go down because nobody wants to borrow. There's nothing, there's nothing to do with your leverage. Right. So if you see defy interest rates starting to go higher, that, that's demand. So I would feel like I would lean into that and see what the next quarter brings, because that pulse will probably last a quarter or two.
- [44:26]
A
Gotcha. All right, well, that's a really great place to end. Before I let you go, I just want to give you the chance either to share anything, any views you haven't had a chance to express, or I. I always like to see if my guests have a contrarian opinion or two that they're itching to get off their chest.
- [44:43]
B
And you haven't heard enough contrarian opinions yet. Okay, so here's a contrarian opinion. I do think a lot of tokenized equity stuff is being built very well and by a large number of people chasing this elusive, you know, Saturday night in Europe kind of trader. I do think a lot of stuff is being built in crypto on spec right now, and we're going to have to see if the demand's really there. That will be an interesting test. I think, for a lot of these builders, it's great that the stuff's being built. And at the same time, you know, what the New York Stock Exchange and NASDAQ are doing to push forward tokenization tech programs is fantastic and is going to be undoubtedly useful. But it will be interesting to see if suddenly all of equity trading sort of moves into the tokenized world just because of availability. That's my contrarian view. It's like, I'm not so sure.
- [45:49]
A
Yeah, I don't think that's actually as contrarian as. Not to put you down anyway, but I don't think that's quite as contrarian as you may have prefaced it. Prefaced it as. I mean, anyone who's followed my work at Forbes before I moved over to sharply knows I've written several stories and heard from some very angry people about tokenization and sort of the gap between the, the promise and, and the practice and. But it really comes down to it's. It's easy to. Not easy. That's the wrong way to say it, but it's feasible and, and relatively straightforward to build out pilots and POCs and tech stacks and, and operationalize this stuff. But you can't artificially, or at least sustainably artificially build demand, and you can't just by decree create secondary liquidity, which is really like the linchpin, the keystone for all of this. So.
- [46:47]
B
Yeah, no, that's a good point. I mean, if, if people, if people should remember one thing is that, you know, good liquidity costs money.
- [46:57]
A
So coming from a market market maker, I guess, you know, that good liquidity
- [47:02]
B
costs money and, and who's gonna, you know, who's gonna pay for the liquidity once the profit products are out there? So we'll see. But people do love trading and, you know, I, I think, I think the next couple of years are going to be fascinating.
- [47:17]
A
All right, well, we'll have to have you back. Thanks, Andy, again for joining. Congrats on the, the new role. Thank you to everybody for watching and listening. And tune in next week for another episode of Bits and Bips, the Interview.
- [47:30]
B
Thanks, Sa.